- Maine Caucuses a Chance to Right the Romney Ship
- Greek Debt Saga Back on Center Stage for Markets
- Greece Now Struggles to Overcome Mistrust
- Obama Budget Bets Other Concerns Will Trump the Deficit
- China President-in-Waiting to Sample Slices of America
- MF Global Trustee Sees Shortfall of $1.6 Billion
- Iran to Announce 'Very Important' Nuclear Progress
- Traveling Light in a Time of Digital Thievery
- UK Police Arrest Five at Murdoch's Sun Newspaper
- In Search of America's ‘Hottest Forecasters’
- Dow vs. S&P 500: Which is a Better Investment?
- Mick Fleetwood on the MP3 ‘Dumbing Down’ of Music
- Avis on the Road to Strong Growth: Analyst
- Private Homebuilders: Dead Men Walking
- LinkedIn’s Growth Is Already Priced In: Analyst
- The Real Reason Behind Bank of America’s Rally
- 5 Hedge Funds’ Top Stocks Soar After 2011 Rout
- This Valentine’s Day Love Is Served on a Silver Platter
MOST SHARED
- Traveling Light in a Time of Digital Thievery
- Amid Efforts to Rescue Greece, a Lack of Trust From Allies
- How to Date a Wall Street Man
- These Problems Mean You're Doing Something Right
- Why Greece Will Default, Leave the Euro Zone
- Greece Warns Bailout Rebels of Unknown, Dangerous Path
- Italy's Mario Monti One-on-One
MOST POPULAR
HOT ON FACEBOOK
French Banks Losses From Crisis Total $28.5 Billion
Text Size 
French banks have lost about $28.5 billion so far this year in the global financial crisis, but they remain much healthier than banks in the United States, France's finance minister said Monday.
Speaking on French radio station RMC, Christine Lagarde said French banks lost 1.5 billion euros ($2.14 billion) last week alone because of the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers Holdings[LEH
Loading...
()
], but added "there's nothing to worry about."
"All the banks in the world are necessarily affected," Lagarde said, adding "French banks are much more solid than American banks."
Lagarde said the French banking system is "solid" because it is "much more diversified and much more balanced than the American system."
Banks around the world have written off billions of euros in losses stemming from bad mortgage debt.
In the past two weeks, the U.S. government has taken over the two biggest U.S. mortgage companies, Fannie Mae[FNM
Loading...
()
] and Freddie Mac[FRE
Loading...
()
], and its biggest insurance company, American International Group [AIG
Loading...
()
], and stood by while the nation's fourth-largest investment bank, Lehman Brothers, was forced to declare bankruptcy and another investment giant, Merrill Lynch[MER
Loading...
()
], was forced to sell itself to Bank of America[BAC
Loading...
()
].
U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke made a joint decision last week that the only way to stop the carnage was to deal with the root cause of all the troubles, billions of dollars of bad mortgage debt sitting on the books of major financial companies.
This debt has triggered the worst credit crisis in decades, causing credit markets to essentially freeze up last week despite the fact that the Fed joined with major central banks around the world to pump billions of dollars of reserves into the financial system.
The plan the administration has developed with support from the Fed would have the government buy up to $700 billion of the bad loans, taking them off the books of financial firms with the hope that this will allow those companies to resume normal lending operations.
- Marketing clichés aside, sometimes diamonds are for investing.
- The ‘Fast Money’ traders weigh in on fashion related stocks from apparel to footwear.
- This list of the 10 most active cities for speed traps was compiled by Trapster.com. See if your town is there.
- This Valentine’s Day should prove a love fest for restaurants, as many couples will be dining out.
- Here’s a look at Westminster Kennel Club’s most successful breeds—and how much they cost.
- What kind of homes do celebrity couples share? Here’s our updated list. Take a look.
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes
